Sperm Wars

by Robin Baker

  Women, like most female animals that hide the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle, continue to have intercourse well into pregnancy. This is the final touch by which they can confuse the males around them. If a woman lost interest in sex as soon as she conceived, it would be a clear signal to the males around her that conception had occurred. This would allow each of them to make some assessment of who could and could not be the genetic father. Continuing intercourse well into pregnancy guarantees the ultimate confusion of all potential fathers. This explains why our main character was keen to have unprotected intercourse with her partner on his return. It meant that in his eyes, and even in hers, he could have been the father of her third child, even though he wasn’t.

  Given such a short-lived and ideal opportunity for undetected infidelity, the woman’s body made a shrewd move in collecting sperm from more than one man. She gained two benefits. First, she halved her chances of being unlucky enough to collect sperm from a man who just happened to be infertile (10 per cent of men, largely due to sexually transmitted disease – Scene 11), despite appearing to be a suitable genetic father (Scene 18). But secondly, by putting two men’s armies into competition, she increased her chances of being fertilised by an ejaculate competent at sperm warfare (Scenes 6 and 21). She might never again have such a perfect opportunity to conceive a child with better genes than her partner could provide – not without leaving him, anyway. We do not know which of the two competitors was actually the father, but whichever he was, he was the man who won the sperm war she had promoted.

  When a woman has sex with two men over a short period of time, she has three ways of influencing which of them fathers any child that may result. First, she can have sex with one of the men at a more fertile phase of her menstrual cycle (Scene 6). Secondly, she can retain a larger sperm army from one of the males (Scenes 22 to 26). Thirdly, like the woman in Scene 17, she can use modern contraceptive techniques.

  If a woman uses a barrier method, such as cap or condom, with one man but not the other, she can prevent the former from entering sperm into warfare at all. Alternatively, by using the pill and then not using the pill, like the woman in the scene, she can influence which man’s sperm is most likely to have access to an egg. Indeed, our main character made full use of modern contraception in ensuring that she did not conceive via her partner. The other two men, however, were given equal chances. All they had to do was win a sperm war.

  As we discussed in Scene 16, modern contraception may not have much influence on how many children a woman has in her lifetime. But it has provided her with a powerful and efficient tool with which to enhance her natural ability to time when and via whom she conceives. Rarely is contraception technology used in this way consciously. But in the hands of a woman’s urges it is a powerful new weapon by which she can increase her reproductive success.

  7

  Shopping Around for Genes

  SCENE 18

  Spoilt for Choice

  Despite the open windows, the room was hot and humid. The naked woman moved slowly off the bed so as not to wake the young man sprawled next to her. Without dressing, she walked downstairs, through the open french windows, and into the bright sunlight. The tiles of the patio were hot to her feet. She paused for a second, then ran a few steps and dived into the large swimming pool. The blissfully cool water washed the remnants of her recent intercourse from her thighs and pubic hair and, as she swam the length of the pool, carried away her flowback.

  She had been in the water about ten minutes when the young man she had left on her bed appeared on the patio. She watched his naked, tanned and muscular body run across the hot tiles and dive not quite perfectly into the water. He swam strongly over to her, trod water by her side, then kissed her. After a few minutes together, enjoying the water, she asked him to go. Without argument, he swam back across the pool, pulled himself out of the water, and disappeared into the house to shower and dress.

  The woman also left the pool. She dried herself with a towel hanging from the pool-side lounger, then walked down the steps on to the lawn, relishing the coolness of the grass beneath her feet. There was no danger of her nakedness being seen. The garden was so large, the bordering trees and security fencing so high and the neighbours so far away, that her privacy was complete. When the young man appeared at the french windows to shout his farewell, she was on her way back to the patio. She felt like a Greek statue as she stood in the middle of the lawn and waved goodbye. For a woman only months from her fortieth birthday and with three children, one now in her mid-twenties, her body was in impressive shape.

  As the young man turned to leave, she walked back to the patio. In five years, he was probably her best find yet. Her advertisement was simple but effective: ‘Part-time gardener required to maintain large garden over summer. Ideal for student during summer vacation’. Each year she had interviewed over twenty applicants. Her choice was based on the student’s looks, intelligence, maturity, self-confidence and sexual aura. She took it as testimony to her own good looks and judgement that it had never taken her more than a fortnight to seduce any of her choices. The result was that for two days a week, over about three months each summer, she had the sexual companionship of a young man nearly twenty years her junior. And she had her lawn mowed and her garden weeded.

  This year she had hired two men, both medical students, whom she had found equally attractive. One worked on Tuesdays, the other Fridays. As she stretched out in the sun on the lounger, she toyed once again with the fantasy of having both young men in bed with her at the same time. But that was for the future. As she drifted in and out of a sun-drenched sleep, she reflected on the events that had given her such a good life.

  It all began on her fourteenth birthday. She had been out with her mother, shopping around for a new pair of jeans. It was a freezing cold winter’s day, and while they were shopping it had started to snow. The town was a forty-five-minute bus ride away from their home, even on a good day. By the time they arrived at the bus stop, the snow was settling fast. The bus never came. But the man in the large and very expensive car did.

  He wasn’t really a stranger. When he wasn’t at his apartment in the city, he lived in a virtual mansion in their home village. Her father worked for him as a gardener cum handyman, helping to maintain his house and its grounds. Although for years she had seen him driving around, she had never really met him before. All she knew was that he was about fifty years old, very rich, and apparently had no children, despite having lived with the same woman for about twenty years. She had heard her parents talk about infidelity and children by other women. She had also heard them talk about infertility and women’s problems, but had taken little interest.

  On the journey home she had been struck by his friendliness. At fourteen, she was well developed and already attractive, with a maturity and self-confidence that would have graced a twenty-year-old. During the journey, she found herself doing most of the talking. She liked and felt comfortable with this man and had no hesitation, a week later, in accepting another lift from him when he drove past her at the school bus stop. After that, he drove her home with increasing frequency. Her schoolfriends teased her a bit about it, but it didn’t bother her.

  The following summer, during the long vacation, she lost her virginity. Her lover was a boy of seventeen whom she and her friends had worshipped from a distance for months. After the trauma of their first intercourse, she began to enjoy their sexual activities. She became the envy of her friends as she described in great, though sometimes imaginary, detail her sexual adventures with this young idol.

  That autumn, she resumed her journeys home from school with her father’s employer. She was in his car the day before his partner was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. After that, she didn’t see him for several months as he and his partner moved to the city for her to be treated. He did not reappear until a few weeks after his partner’s death which, she discovered later, had been the day after her fifteenth birthday. From t
hen on, whenever he wasn’t in the city on business, he made a point of picking her up from school. Soon, they actually discussed which days he could do so, and she would wait for him.

  Winter cut down on the sexual activity with her boyfriend until he passed his driving test and acquired a virtually derelict car. Then, they became adept at cramped sex on the cold and badly sprung back seat. She began to fantasise about doing the same with her father’s employer in the luxury of his car. It would be like being in bed. Now, stretched out in the sun by the side of her swimming pool, the woman still remembered clearly the move that changed her life. On their way home from school, waiting at traffic lights, she had put her hand on his thigh and leaned across to kiss him on the cheek.

  They never did have sex in his car. But within a week of that kiss she was in his bed, experiencing for the first time the difference between sex with a man of fifty and sex with a boy of seventeen. Throughout that spring and summer she had sex at least twice a week, more or less alternately with her boyfriend and the older man. Neither knew of the other’s existence. It was autumn before she and her mother realised she was three months pregnant.

  She refused to discuss paternity with anyone except her parents and her father’s employer. Her parents were told that the father was the young boyfriend who had just left for college and whose parents had now moved out of the area. Her father’s employer was told that the baby was his, as well it might have been. He feared conviction for having sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. But he also felt genuine affection for her and for the child he believed was his. Explaining to her parents that he would do the same for any employee who was in trouble, he offered to help with the child’s upkeep. On the strength of this extra income, her parents volunteered to look after the child, a girl, while their daughter finished her education.

  When, despite the distractions of motherhood, she performed well in her examinations, the man again offered to help. This time he provided money for her to have a college education. During her two and a bit years at college, she had about ten different sexual partners. Even so, twice a term she would arrange to meet her benefactor at his city apartment for a weekend of sex and a taste of the high life.

  She never did graduate. In her third year, faced with a choice between months of hard revision and a tempting offer from her benefactor, she left college. They travelled extensively for a few months and then, on their return, began to live together with the daughter, now aged six. At her urging, he sold his mansion and bought the wonderful house in which she now lived. They spent nearly ten years together in comfort and luxury, travelling the world, and mixing with equally wealthy people. They also had a further two children, both boys.

  All three of the woman’s children were raised by nannies, sent to boarding school, and spent very little time at home. Her partner was without doubt the father of her elder son, but she could not be sure who was the father of the younger one. It could have been her partner, but it could equally have been the politician with whom she had sex every day for a week at about the relevant time. Moreover, if he had been a month later taking her to bed, so too might have been the surgeon, a family friend who had treated her predecessor for cancer.

  Her partner lived just long enough to see the younger son’s eighth birthday. Then, aged sixty-five, he died of a heart attack. That was ten years ago. She inherited the house and more than enough money to live very comfortably – she continued to pay for her children’s education, travelled when she wanted and indulged in occasional luxuries, like young gardeners. After her partner’s death, there had been no shortage of men eager to share her life. Many were widowed or separated and most were rich. She was rarely without a sexual partner, and often successive partners overlapped. However, she stubbornly refused to allow anybody to live with her permanently. Besides, she was increasingly attracted to struggling young men, full of drive and ambition, rather than to men saddled with the complacency of success or inheritance.

  Her daughter, now aged twenty-five and living abroad with her partner, had just announced her first pregnancy. Her sons, aged eighteen and nineteen, were both at college studying medicine. She took great pride in all her children, particularly her sons – not because of what she had done for them, which in truth was very little, but for what they were and for what they had done for themselves. The boys were very different from each other, perhaps reflecting a different paternity. But they were both good-looking and intelligent, precociously mature and confident, yet still gentle and caring. She had no doubt they were going to break many a girl’s heart.

  Earlier, in their mid-teens, they had been in the habit of bringing home friends from school to stay for a while during the vacations. Many a young boy had been shocked and embarrassed at the family’s practice of swimming naked together in the pool. In two weeks’ time, her sons would begin their summer vacation. This time they would stay with her for only a week before travelling abroad, and, moreover, they were bringing girls with them, not boys. Mischievously, the woman wondered if they would swim naked with her this summer – and, if they did, whether their girlfriends would join them.

  She got up off the lounger and sauntered across the patio, dragging her towel behind her. It was time to shower and dress so as to be ready for her evening’s escort. As she made her way indoors, she enjoyed yet again the thought that for a gardener’s daughter she had done rather well.

  In congratulating herself on her life, the woman in this scene was of course measuring her success on a hedonistic scale. By her own and probably most other people’s yardsticks, she had indeed done ‘rather well’. And even on a biological scale, she had done rather well.

  Few factors have more influence on a person’s reproductive success than their selection of a mate or mates. Yet mate selection is complex, particularly for a woman. More often than not she has to compromise in many different ways. The scene we have just witnessed is the first of four in which we shall explore two matters – the problems that people, particularly women, face when selecting a mate; and the methods they employ in solving those problems.

  Here the central character successfully cleared all of the obstacles to reproductive success that women normally encounter when choosing a mate. First, through her choice of long-term partner, she engineered an environment conducive to the easy and successful raising of children (from the point of view of being in a position to offer them every opportunity, anyway). Secondly, she managed to collect some of the most sought-after male genes in her vicinity. As a result, she produced children with the looks and ability to make the most of the comfortable environment into which they were born. Her strategy was risky, but innate ability was on her side. She made the most of her daring and cunning, her composure and good looks, and successfully walked the tightrope of disease, discovery and desertion.

  In choosing a man or men with whom to share her life, a woman has two major issues to consider. On the one hand, she needs a man who can help her raise her children. On the other, she needs genes that in combination with her own will produce attractive, fertile and successful children. The better the environment and the better the assistance, the more fully each child will achieve his or her genetic potential.

  A woman’s difficulty is that she has a much wider choice of men to provide her with genes than she has of long-term partners. She could probably persuade many men of her choice to give her their genes – it takes only a few minutes of sex, after all. Her options for a long-term partner, though, are much more limited. Most men in most societies have not the time, the energy nor the resources to help support more than one woman and her children at any one time. Her choice of long-term partner is therefore restricted to those men who are unattached, ready to desert their current partner, or who have so much time, energy or wealth that they can support more than one family.

  An equally difficult problem is to identify which of the few available men would make the best long-term partner. The most reliable way would be to look at past performance, but ine
vitably the best long-term partners are already paired to other women. Much of the woman’s choice, therefore, is limited to young and unattached men who have not yet proved themselves as long-term partners. All she can do is look for signs of potential, and hope that her judgement is accurate.

  Surveys of many cultures around the world consistently show that, in looking for a long-term partner, women prefer men who have, or have the potential of, wealth, status, stability and durability. In the past, in all cultures, the children of women paired to men at the top of the scale for these qualities had a far greater chance of survival, health and subsequent fecundity. The same holds true even in today’s industrialised societies.

  The preferences are clear, but for most women a level of compromise is necessary. One man may be wealthy but uncaring; another may be of high status but unstable; yet another may be poor, but stable and caring. So, inevitably, a woman has to opt for the best compromise. Of course, she does not have to stay with her first partner. Again, studies show that when a woman leaves one partner for another, she invariably moves up the scale to a better compromise.

  In choosing a man to help raise her children, a woman is only secondarily impressed by looks, whereas in choosing a short-term partner for sex, looks are much more important. The features she finds most attractive are clear eyes, healthy skin and hair, firm buttocks, a waist that is about the same in circumference as his hips, shapely legs, broad shoulders, quick wit and intelligence. She is also attracted by symmetry in his physical features. These various qualities are all reasonably reliable indicators of genetic health, fertility and competitiveness. As such, they imply a genetic constitution that would also be desirable in her children.